"Get the broom, Bee, and sweep off the steps. I shall be glad when the blossoms are gone. They make such a litter."
"Why, Aunt Annie, glad when the blossoms are gone? You can't mean it. Just look at those trees! Did you ever see anything so pretty?"
"They are pretty enough, child," returned Mrs. Raymond carelessly. "There! cease your rhapsodies, and get the broom. When you have seen as many Springs as I have you won't be quite so ecstatic over them."
"I believe that I'll always feel just as I do now," declared Bee as she ran for the broom. "When the trees begin to bud something gets into my being that makes me feel like—like—Oh, like Alexander the Great: that I could conquer the world."
"It's the wine of youth in your blood, Bee." The lady smiled at the girl's enthusiasm. "That's what it is to be young. You are very like your father."
"Am I, auntie?" Beatrice flushed with pleasure.
"Yes. At least you are in regard to your feeling for Nature. He sees beauty in everything; or used to do so. It seems to be a family trait of the Raymonds. I don't notice it so much in Adele; but then she takes after my people."
"Perhaps it is because she is so beautiful herself," remarked Bee meditatively. "I've noticed that people don't prize what they themselves possess."
"Don't say that, Bee. You are far from being homely," spoke Mrs. Raymond graciously, noting a trace of wistfulness in her niece's tone. "Beside, 'Beauty is only skin—'"
"Yes; I know, Aunt Annie. Spare me!" The girl put her hand in laughing protest over her aunt's mouth. "Still, I wouldn't mind having the skin. I just believe that that saying, and the other: 'Handsome is as handsome does,' were invented by some ugly old thing with a skin as yellow as a pumpkin. Oh, here is Adele at last!"